It was dirty up in the superstructure. Dirty, hot and muggy. There were no corridors, only a vast open area crisscrossed with structural beams and low overhangs of metal or stone. Dust and grime covered everything.
THX stumbled over something half-buried in filth. Bones… a human ribcage. He backed away.
The light up here was strange. Shafts of weird, concentrated light seemed to slant through the superstructure here and there, filled with dust motes that danced and nickered. In between there were pools of shadow.
And the light was fading, weakening noticeably. The shadows were getting darker, deeper, encompassing everything.
THX was hungry. And so tired. With a shudder of distaste, he sat down in a dust-covered nook made by the angle of a heavy steel I-beam. Despite the heat, he was trembling. He leaned his head back against the grimy beam and was almost instantly asleep.
Scrabbling noises woke him.
It was dark! Absolutely black, no lights at all. THX had never seen such darkness before.
Something was out there. He could hear something moving around, softly, snuffling in the blackness. More than one of them. He stayed absolutely still, listening, wishing his heart wouldn’t pound so hard.
Something touched his outstretched foot. With an involuntary yell, THX yanked his foot back and swung out at the darkness. His hand hit something soft and furry. A throaty yelp and scampering sounds skittering away from him.
Shelldwellers! he realized.
Gradually, as his eyes became accustomed to the dark, he could make out the faintest glints of them. Their eyes watching him.
He pushed himself to a standing position, being careful to remain within the slight protection of the I-beam’s shape. And there he stood, for hours, warily watching the shelldwellers who snuffled and padded around him uncertainly.
Why don’t they do something? he wondered. And then he realized that they were doing something: they were waiting. Wailing for exhaustion or hunger to do their work for them. Why fight a giant when the giant will soon enough collapse?
The darkness seemed to be not so bad now. After a long time, it definitely appeared to be getting brighter all through the superstructure. Not truly light, nothing like the glareless eternal light of the lower levels or even the strong shafts of odd light that had spotted the superstructure hours earlier. It was grayish faint half-light, cold and somehow damp-feeling.
But it was enough to see the shelldwellers. Four of them were squatting, hairy and wild, a dozen meters from THX. They carried no weapons. They were small and gnarled-looking.
“Go away!” THX shouted at them. “Leave me alone.”
They didn’t move.
Only four of them, he thought. If I don’t chase them, they’ll wait for me to fall asleep or collapse from hunger.
With a deep intake of breath, he gathered his strength and rushed at them. They scattered, shrieking.
He laughed and watched them disappear into the distance. Then something fell on his back from above and hot teeth bit into his shoulder. Something else dropped on him and he went down.
They were all over him, biting and tearing at him with their nails. THX roared and pulled one of them off, flailed at the others, fought his way to his knees. The shelldwellers swarmed over him—six, eight, he couldn’t tell how many.
They had tricked him into coming out into the open where they could attack him. The back of his mind raged at his own stupidity, and his fury carried over into his fighting. He bowled them over, got to his feet and picked two of them up, one in each hand, and hurled them away. He kicked and swung and slapped at them. He used one of them as a club to split the skull of another. He roared and snapped and fought like any jungle beast.
They fled. They dragged one of their members with them, leaving two others laying inertly on the filth-strewn floor. THX stood there trembling, feeling trickles of blood on his shoulder, his face, his legs. His hands were bruised and raw.
They’ll be back, he knew.
The light was stronger now, almost the way it was when he had first come up to the superstructure. But the light seemed to be falling in a different way, opposite the direction it had been slanting in before.
THX shook his head. Can’t stay here, he realized, thinking of the shelldwellers. Might as well make an end of it and go Outside.
He walked shakily, still bleeding, toward the nearest shaft of light. Looking up, he saw an access tunnel with a ladder built into its side. Through some sort of grill-work at the top he could see a grayish blue color.
Probably one breath of the poisonous air Outside and it’ll be all over, he thought. But what else is there? Better that than being eaten by the shelldwellers.
He climbed the ladder slowly, though, almost reluctantly. The grillwork was rusted shut and he almost felt relieved. But with grim stubbornness he pushed against it, first with one hand, then both, then with his back wedged against it, straining sweatily against the gritty bars.